cutting the nasty payroll tax? nahh...

The GOP likes cutting income taxes moreso-- and the Dems are too busy demagoguing Social Security and posing on helping the working poor and middle class.

From Matt Miller in the Washington Post...

Ask any economist or businessperson what kind of tax cut would be the biggest boost to job creation and the answer is clear: a cut in payroll taxes, because it would directly reduce the cost of employment.

Ask any social justice champion which tax is the unfairest tax of all and the answer is clear: the payroll tax, because on the employee side it is 6.3 percent of wages up to a cap of $106,800, thus taking a bigger bite, proportionally, out of a dishwasher's paycheck than a CEO's.

So which tax has the Democratic White House decided it won't propose cutting as part of its last-ditch scramble to convince voters before November that it's serious about jobs?

The payroll tax.

If this doesn't make sense to you, you're paying attention. And you're beginning to see why the president's latest economic rescue plan has been held hostage (again) by his party's confusion and fear...

As The Post reported Tuesday, "The White House has decided to forgo a broad-based payroll-tax holiday at this point...could have deprived Social Security of needed cash even as Democrats are accusing the GOP of plotting the program's demise on the campaign trail."

Translation: The one tax cut that could have immediately created jobs (and gained bipartisan support -- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) proposed a payroll tax cut on Wednesday) has been declared off-limits because it would muddy the Democratic message that Republicans are out to destroy Social Security....

And Miller is ignoring that fact that firms shift much/all of "their" burden to workers. Brutal!